LONDON: The five-year imprisonment of a British-Iranian woman in Iran is a “blot on British diplomacy,” her husband said ahead of her scheduled release.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been held in Tehran since 2016 when she was jailed for five years over allegations of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government. She denies the allegations.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband said he has spent the years during his wife’s detention “swinging between hope and despair,” UK media reported.
“It is shocking that what started off as a mum and a baby on holiday could be allowed to last for five years.
“There’s no ambiguity in that, that’s just staggering. It is a blot on British diplomacy and clearly Iranian hostage-taking is outrageous,” Richard Ratcliffe said.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 42, has been held under house arrest at her parents’ home in Tehran since March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Her original sentence is due to end on Sunday.
The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office told Ratcliffe in January that his efforts to publicize the March 7 date could jeopardize her release from prison.
He responded on Twitter by saying: “If anything happens to Nazanin or her family, or if she is not released to the UK on March 7 — there should be consequences.”
“We continue to believe that transparency is the best form of protection from abuse,” Ratcliffe added.
“We also made clear that the government’s role is to remind the Iranian authorities that Nazanin has the UK’s protection — not to act as a messenger for IRGC mafia tactics and suppression.”
Amnesty International joined Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s family in a “countdown to reunion” as the end of the UK national’s five-year prison sentence approaches.
Ratcliffe launched the countdown to freedom last Friday alongside the human rights organization and its supporters who are joining in on social media.
Husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe says detention ‘blot on British diplomacy’ ahead of scheduled release
https://arab.news/nv9aw
Husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe says detention ‘blot on British diplomacy’ ahead of scheduled release
- Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been held under house arrest at her parents’ home in Tehran since March 2020
- Her husband said he has spent the years during his wife’s detention “swinging between hope and despair”
Almost 60 percent of Kyiv without power as Russian strikes shatter grid
- Many of Kyiv’s residents have been living in cold apartments with only a few hours of electricity a day
- “Nearly 60 percent of the capital is without electricity,” Zelensky wrote on X
KYIV: More than half of Kyiv is still without power a day after Russian strikes on energy facilities, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday, as Ukrainians struggle through a bitter cold snap.
Many of Kyiv’s residents have been living in cold apartments with only a few hours of electricity a day — or sometimes none at all — since a recent surge in Russian attacks on a grid battered by nearly four years of missile and drone strikes.
“As of this morning, about 4,000 buildings in Kyiv are still without heat, and nearly 60 percent of the capital is without electricity,” Zelensky wrote on X.
The temperature in the capital was minus 12 degrees Celsius (10.4 degrees Fahrenheit) on Wednesday morning, although it climbed slightly by the afternoon.
Some residents complained on social media of being without electricity or heating for more than a day.
In the eastern region of Kharkiv, where the energy system has also been heavily bombarded, Governor Oleh Syniehubov said 520,000 consumers were without power on Wednesday, down on Tuesday’s figure of more than a million.
He said Kharkiv region’s energy infrastructure was attacked again on Wednesday.
In the southern region of Odesa, energy company DTEK said one of its facilities had been badly damaged in the morning, depriving several thousand households of power.
Even when some power is restored to households, they face rolling blackouts for most of the day, as a significant chunk of Ukraine’s power generation capacity has been taken out by Moscow.
The outages have seriously affected Ukraine’s cellular services, with the CEO of Ukraine’s largest mobile provider Kyivstar saying that just under 10 percent of their grid was not working.
